Who is the most important person in a business? If you ask most experts, they’ll say it’s the customer. However, really great leaders like Richard Branson will tell you it’s the employee. Which is absolutely correct. After all, it’s always the employee that takes care of the customer and creates the experience that brings the customer back. So why, when we talk about the future of work and the workplace, do we leave out the most critical asset, the worker of the future?

Probably because training and building amazing employees is one of the hardest things in business. People and relationships are tough!

But don’t stop reading here. It’s one thing to know your employees are important and another thing to actually walk the talk and do the work to treat them that way. Your future success will depend on how well you can understand, train, and build your employees to become the worker of the future. In a 2018 talk at BetterUp Shift, Josh Bersin, founder and principal of Bersin by Deloitte, told the audience that, “The future of work actually has little to do with technology, AI, or algorithms. It’s all about people, organizations, and how we manage people within these organizations.” And he’s absolutely right! People are people and they will always be the differentiator in growing our businesses.

So when we look ahead to the future, instead of asking ourselves questions like:

  • Will my job be obsolete in ten years time?
  • Is this booming business venture a momentary fad or something more?
  • Will a machine take my job?
  • If the workplace of the future changes drastically, will I be able to see it coming or will I be caught unaware?

Let’s focus on what we KNOW AND CAN control: our relationships with our people and how we can grow them to become the employees we need both now and in the future.

As Robert Bernard Shaw once said, “Life is not about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself.” Rather than worrying about what the workplace of the future or the future of work will be, let’s focus instead on creating the WORKER OF THE FUTURE from the inside/out with a few simple steps!

 

Who is the Worker of the Future?

In his book The Future of Work, Jacob Morgan argues that there are five emerging trends:

  • New behaviors shaped by social media and the web
  • Collaborative cloud technologies
  • New generations of workers with new attitudes, expectations, and ways of working
  • Greater ability to work from anywhere, anytime
  • Increased globalization and connection to diverse peoples

These trends aren’t just hypotheticals; they’re already permeating our workplaces and rapidly changing how we work. And not just in a few industries either. These workplace trends affect all of us, no matter who we are, where we are, or the type of work we do. To survive and thrive in the new future of work, we ALL must become the worker of the future. And we know that people are people and the thread is within: People are the workers of the future even when everything else changes around them. So, listen right here, right now. Universities, colleges, businesses, please, and I mean f*&^%n please, start creating the worker of the future by training them on themselves and relationships that add value to others.

So if you’re a worker (whether manager, front line, C- level) what will you do today to recreate yourself as that worker of the future? How will you navigate these trends? Who will you be while you’re doing that and how will you go about developing yourself to meet the challenge?

Here are a few tips:

  • Know yourself
  • Learn your story
  • Create trust
  • Build solid relationships, starting with yourself
  • LEARN and GROW: update all those skills you need to survive today.

And if you own or run a business, then figure out how to teach and train all your employees these methodologies. We all know they don’t come to you with them naturally, they’re not teaching them in college, and there’s no school on creating the worker of the future. So go ahead and beat the competition and be that for them!

 

What Skills Will the Worker of the Future Need to Succeed?

Aside from the technical skills needed to complete their work, the WORKER OF THE FUTURE will need other skills that I would argue are much more important. After all, technical skills are relatively easy to acquire and train. These other skills aren’t so easy to come by and require significantly more time and energy to develop.

  • The worker of the future must be:
  • Obsessed with learning and growing
  • Authentic and vulnerable with others
  • A great communicator
  • Knowledgable about what their “why” is and what they have to contribute to
  • others
  • Flexible
  • Innovative
  • Entrepreneurial (even if your ambition is more intrapreneurial in nature)
  • Collaborative
  • Self-motivated
  • Certain of who they are
  • Able to tell stories that connect
  • A leader
  • Trustworthy

Did you notice that the four skills at the top of the list are concepts we’ve been talking about for years?! As a matter of fact that is what we do and who we are. We believe are at the precipice of creating and building theWORKER OF THE FUTURE!

 

What Can I Do Now to Ensure I’m Becoming the Worker of the Future?

Whether you’re an employee who wants to ensure you always have a job, a manager who wants to keep climbing the career ladder, a freelancer who wants to make sure you’ll always be in-demand, or an entrepreneur who wants to build a business that people can’t get enough of, you need to start by ensuring YOU are becoming the WORKER OF THE FUTURE.

To do that, you start by focusing on yourself. Yes, you need to cultivate those thirteen skills on the list above, but you need to understand yourself first. Because you can’t help others and you can’t have the impact you want, without getting real about who you are, what your story is, and what you have to offer in the workplace.

If you’re serious about becoming, hiring and/or training the worker of the future, you need to invest in yourself now to make sure you will win in the years to come.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  1. Focus on What You Can Control.
  2. Deepen Your Relationship With Yourself.
  3. Know Your Story and What You Have to Offer.
  4. Develop the Thirteen Worker of the Future Skills You Need for Success.
  5. Make it About Others.
  6. Always be Learning and Growing

Want to know the secret to not only attracting talented millennial employees to your company, but retaining them? Hint: it doesn’t involve installing a pool table, adding an on-site gym, or allowing them to bring their dogs to work.

No, if you want to attract the very best employees for your company and keep them for the long haul, you need to get serious about creating an employer brand.

An employer brand is the brand that speaks to your employees. It’s not aimed at the customer, but rather the people who work for you. It should definitely be aligned with your customer brand, but they serve different purposes. The employer brand is meant to both attract AND retain talented millennial employees.

So how do you go about cultivating your employer brand? Start by making sure you fulfill on the four things millennials want from their employers. Millennials want what we all want: to learn and grow, to work for an organization that is real and transparent, to have their managers and bosses offer great feedback so they can improve, and to do fulfilling work that gives them a sense of purpose and contribution. But what makes millennials different than other generations is that if these needs aren’t being met, they are much more willing to change jobs and go someplace else.

To illustrate how you can incorporate the things millennials want most from their workplace into your employer brand, take a look at how four top companies are getting it right with their employees:

 

How Google Provides Space for its Employees to Learn and Grow

You’ve probably heard of Google’s “20 Percent Time” policy. Google allows their employees one full day a week, or 20% of their paid work time, to work on a project of their own choosing that they’re passionate about. Now the project still has to be Google-related, but Google deliberately allows space for its employees to learn and grow. And what’s more, the 20 Percent Time policy isn’t just hollow words on a mission statement: it’s been embedded into their company culture and employer brand since 2004.

Now a 20 Percent Time policy might not be feasible for your company, but there are others ways you can create space for your employees to learn and improve. You can offer a mentorship program, have them take some online courses, or send them to a conference or workshop like Strengths & Story which teaches them about themselves and articulating and creating value for others. When you take an interest in your employees and their career development, you make it about others. And when you make it about others, you will win.

 

How Amazon Takes Authenticity Seriously

It’s hard to go a day without seeing Amazon in the news. The global giant has found a way to impact nearly every aspect of our lives by changing the way we shop for books, music, products, and even groceries. But Amazon isn’t quite the looming Big Brother figure it’s often made out to be. A 2017 study from Cohn & Wolfe named Amazon the most authentic brand in the US. And while that study was comprised of consumer feedback, a recent two-year study of Amazon employees from Kununu found that “Amazon’s employee satisfaction rate exceeds the national average in 12 categories”. Which is a big deal because some of the categories they were scored on include things like company culture, gender equality, and diversity. What this suggests is that the authentic consumer brand Amazon is putting out to the world is also consistent with their internal employer brand.

The fact is, millennials want to work for a company that walks the talk. They want you to be real with them. They want to know your plans for the company and what your vision is for their role within it. And they want to know that your public stance on gender equality, employee development, diversity, etc, isn’t just a sound bite. They want to know that their bosses and managers take that public stance into every interaction with their employees.

 

 

How Patagonia Uses Feedback to Drive Employee Performance Goals

Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and supplies giant, has over 1,500 employees at stores across the US. But to ensure they keep all of their stores working towards the same common objectives, they use a program called HighGround, which allows employees to set goals within the system and receive feedback from their managers on their workplace performance. The program is not required, employees opt-in to using it, but it has more than an 80% adoption rate among the company’s employees and of those, most report that they prefer this more streamlined system to the old ways of receiving feedback. And what has installing this system of feedback done for the company as a whole? Well, for the last three years, Patagonia has taken top 100 spots in the annual lists put together by Great Place to Work, was ranked #6 on the 2018 World’s Most Innovative Companies List, and continues to post annual revenue growth.

Having a system in place for your employees to set goals, receive guidance on reaching those goals, and get feedback from their managers and bosses is vitally important to your company’s overall success. After all, a company is only as good as the people within it – so invest in your people by providing a way for them to communicate and receive feedback! Make use of a program like HighGround. Have schedule quarterly performance reviews. And train your employees how to give and receive constructive feedback on a daily basis.

 

How GoFundMe Gives its Employees Purpose and Contribution

Since 2010, GoFundMe has grown to become one of the world’s most trusted fundraising platforms. Over 10,000 people start a GoFundMe on the site every day to raise money for everything from emergency medical bills to travel expenses to non-profit causes. To hear the transformative stories of real people who have been helped by these fundraisers, you need only listen to an episode or two of their new podcast, True Stories of Good People. So to say that the employees of GoFundMe get a sense of purpose and contribution from their work, isn’t a stretch. For a company like GoFundMe, it’s in their DNA and part of their employer brand.

While your company may not be directly transforming people’s lives the way GoFundMe does, you can still find a way to make purpose and contribution part of your employer brand. Regularly share your client testimonials with your employees. Encourage them to ask for immediate feedback from the consumers they help to experience the real-time effects of their work. Make giving part of your company culture by donating a portion of your profits to a non-profit. Set aside a day to volunteer as a company. Or encourage your employees to use their technical skills to give back to the community. Giving your employees a sense of purpose and contribution isn’t just reserved for social good companies like GoFundMe – you can and should make it part of your employer brand!

 

Need more help developing your employer brand? On March 27th, we’ll be taking a deeper dive into the employer brand during our webinar with Steven Bellach from Bottomline Marketing. Click here to register for the free webinar.

I recently got back from a week in Singapore – a week that was bookended by two of the world’s longest flights. And I mean that literally. At 18.5+ hours, the flight from LAX to Singapore is one of the longest commercial flights you can make!

When you travel a lot as I do, you have a ton of thinking time, especially if you can’t sleep on planes like me. You also get to meet all sorts of people. People at their best and at their worst. The best rocks and the worst well, not so much. And when you’re meeting people at their worst, it’s usually because you’re bumping up against their fears – fear of flying, fear of enclosed spaces, fear of missing out (FOMO), fear of whatever. Fear can make people unpleasant, if not downright impossible to deal with. And what’s sad is fear holds people back and prevents them from connecting with their fellow travelers – we’ve all heard those stories of a chance meeting on a plane that changed someone’s life or career forever! So the big question is, how do we move beyond that fear and negativity?

Clearly, the workplace is also a place where you’re likely to meet people working from fear. It shows up differently for all people and sometimes doesn’t even look like fear, but unless you bust through it, it will continue to keep you from achieving the success you want for yourself, your team, and your company.

Over the 36+ hours I spent on a plane at the end of January, I had a lot of time to reflect on what holds people back in life and in their careers. After training over 14,000 millennials, I’ve found that most people struggle with the same five things. Occasionally, I’ll get a client with a unique challenge, but by and large most people get hung up by the same damn things! The good news? They’re all things we can coach you through!

 

Fear of Failure

Fear of failure holds you back because when you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to risk anything. You reject opportunities for growth or advancement because it means stepping outside your comfort zone and opening yourself up to failing. So you stay in the same role even though you have nothing left to learn. You stay at the same job you hate because you’re afraid to fail in a new role at a new company. You daydream about starting your own business, but never do more than dabble because you’re afraid to fail in such a public way.

But here’s the thing. If you want to get a promotion, start your own company, change careers – you need to accept that risk is part of the package. As the old saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained. You HAVE to risk failure and lean into the uncertainty in order to succeed. It is simply not possible to stay “safe” and crush your goals at the same time. You have to be bold and take action, regardless of the outcome.

 

Lack of Confidence

If you suffer from a lack of confidence, you will have trouble connecting with others and asking for what you want whether that’s a promotion, a new role, or the sale. Instead, you wait for these things to be handed to you. You hope that if you work hard enough, your boss will notice and give you the raise you’ve been thinking about. You tell yourself that if you’re nice enough to the prospective client, they’ll just decide to give you their business.

But it doesn’t work like that. You NEED to learn how to connect with others, articulate your value, and ask for what you want in a way that serves others. We call that “WIFThem”. ..What’s in it for them. Which again goes back to working on the relationship you have with yourself so you can know your story and what you have to give to others.

 

Feeling Unworthy

Somehow we’ve got it into our heads that being self-deprecating is the same as being humble. It’s not.

It might seem innocent enough to brush off a compliment or make a joke that puts yourself down, but over time, you begin to reinforce the idea that you are unworthy of the accolades, praise, and compliments of others. And when you feel unworthy of what you’ve already been given, you will shy away from opportunities to do more and be more. Which will never move you closer to your career goals.

Instead, you need to own it!!! We all have something to contribute so figure out what you have to give to others and own every inch of it!!!

 

Fear of Being Found Out

Also known as imposter syndrome, many people I’ve coached are held back by an intense fear that “other people will find them out”. That if people get too close, if they spend too much time with them, they will discover that they’re not as talented, smart, creative, innovative, imaginative, etc. as they’ve made themselves out to be. That once people take a look under the shiny hood, instead of the performance engine they expect to find, they’ll discover the car’s leaking oil and held together with duct tape. So they stay in hiding and keep people at arm’s length.

But if you want the career you’ve always dreamed of, you need to find a way to show your value and be vulnerable, which is one of the key leadership traits for success. Once you can share who you truly are, you’ll be able to make it about others. You can’t make it about others if you can’t be vulnerable and connect with them to find out what they truly care about! So until you let go of this fear that you’ll be found out as a fraud, which you won’t, you’re going to struggle to connect and move forward in your career.

 

Inability to Take Action

Some people are held back simply by their inability to get out of their own way and take action! They get so overwhelmed by the thought of changing jobs, starting a new career, or going the entrepreneur route that they stare at the mountain of decisions that need to be made and choose to do NOTHING. By the way, this fear usually relates to one of the aforementioned fears being buried down deep…but we won’t put you on the couch just yet.

Here’s the thing: you might think you’re abdicating or deferring the responsibility by refusing to make a decision. But you’re still making a choice. You’re choosing to do nothing about your current situation and you’re choosing to do nothing to move you closer to your goals. So if you’re telling yourself that you DO really want the promotion or the job, then you have to DO something about it. You cannot sit back and hope things just work out in your favor.

 

So what’s holding you back? And how are you going to bust through it to get the life and career you want? If you don’t know, then start by scheduling your exploratory coaching call or signing up for our next Strengths & Story workshop.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  1. Take Risks. Lean into Uncertainty.
  2. Be Bold. Be Vulnerable.
  3. Own Your Value.
  4. Connect With Others and Make it About Them.
  5. Choose Action.